“Next is a formal dining room, for when Mom reads an article on the “The Today Show” Facebook page about how eating meals together strengthens family bonds. (Don’t worry, she’ll forget all about it in a week and a half, tops, and you can all go back to eating in silent, separate bliss.)”

This striking Palisades home definitely isn’t built in the Brutalist style, but if you like Brutalism, this place would be a great compromise. If full Brutalism is the dude you dated who was in a touring rock band, this house is the guy who writes commercial jingles at a marketing firm that you eventually married. You enter into the vault-like foyer; straight ahead is the awesome floating staircase, which looks like it’s hermetically sealed in an airtight glass coffin like Vladimir Lenin’s corpse or something. The living room is huge, and gets great natural light from a wraparound wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s also an entertainment wall with a convenient indentation for your television, in case you ever want to watch something but your two laptops, tablet, and phone aren’t available. Next is a formal dining room, for when Mom reads an article on the “The Today Show” Facebook page about how eating meals together strengthens family bonds. (Don’t worry, she’ll forget all about it in a week and a half, tops, and you can all go back to eating in silent, separate bliss.)

The kitchen is large and impeccably appointed with marble counters, stainless steel appliances, and minimalist cabinetry. One stretch of counter is long enough to set up a regulation-sized Slip-n-Slide, which I encourage you to do the next time your parents go out of town. Farther on is an intimate family room with windows on three sides, and a den, with a wall of built-ins that’s perfect for the DVD boxed sets of “The O.C.” that you can’t bring yourself to throw out because they’re your last link to your quickly fading youth.

Upstairs, the master bedroom suite is sprawling. The bedroom itself opens onto a private deck that’s perfect for a morning coffee or a late night drink or just slingshotting ink-filled balloons as the house of the neighbor who borrowed your leaf blower three months ago and now won’t return any of your texts or calls. There’s a cozy office off the master bedroom, and a sitting room. The master walk-in closet has more than enough space for even the most compulsive shopper, though I admit this assumes that if you run out of drawers and racks you can just pile stuff on the floor. The master bath has an awesome soaking tub, twin side-by-side basins, more marble than a quarry, and a glass-walled shower with one of those deluxe handheld shower-heads that people use for … uh … for, you know … shower stuff. Let’s change the subject.

The lower level has a full wet bar and a large sitting room, which I guess means it’s destined to be a “man cave” even though it’s not very cave-like. Maybe brick up the windows and cover the floor with bat guano – then you’ve got yourself a cave, by god. There’s a room that’s being used as a gym, but could be used for pretty much anything, and a really big laundry room. Outside, there’s a fantastic wooden deck that overlooks the manicured backyard, all of which is surrounded by a near-impenetrable privacy wall of greenery. I used to think the point of privacy fences was so you could sunbathe nude or have a backyard meth lab or something, but now I realize that it’s just so you can not mow your lawn for more than a couple weeks without the neighbors angrily calling the city on you. (That’s what I tell the guy who installs my privacy fencing, anyway, so he won’t suspect I’m setting up a backyard meth lab.)